Sometimes, I really do have a tin-heart

Feels – what are they?

 

Urban dictionary’s top definition of it is a wave of emotions that sometimes cannot be adequately explained. It ranges from happiness…

 

…to excitement…

Sorry, I had to really use Kirino for this example.

 

…to surprise romance…

 

…to a mix of many.

 

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However, we usually classify feels as dramatic portrayal of sadness and/or loss, to which I also agree for the most part.

 

The thing about feels is that we really can explain all of them; we just don’t want to because why on Earth would we spend a few minutes of our lives in trying to explain what goes on in our heads? It may work well in Hollywood movies and anime but whenever you experience feels, it’ll just be too much for you to say anything while you’re taking all of that in.

That’s kind of why we have blogs; so we can later reincarnate the wave of emotions we once felt in words. Surely even some of the most experienced novel authors have used personal experience to create masterpieces that moved our hearts one way or another. That’s the power of feels — regardless of form.

 

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Feels in anime

 

For me to actually feel anything for anyone, I need to first have had bonds with them in any logical way. It will also include putting myself in the protagonists’ shoes – what I’ve done for many romance anime to date. Surprisingly, some certain moments that won’t come across as trains of emotions to many, are the opposite for me in one way or another.

…and vice versa – I’m aware that there are also some moments in anime that fully invoked my deepest emotions where it wouldn’t move yours an inch.

So, I’m going to talk about some of the things I see/hear a lot of people spreading around as ‘stuff that give you feels’ while I couldn’t come to get any. This is not saying that they are bad by any means; everyone is different and by having many people going around telling me that these will have me bawling my eyes out, it works similarly to a boy who cries wolf.

 

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 Shelter the music video

 

Shelter shows me a very thick blend of so many things that are wrong with storytelling in anime, into a six minute short. Rather than attempting to tell a real, developed story with meaningful content, it takes the most abusive shortcut by throwing a cute female teen into a position of bittersweet melancholy and using that as a mmeas of manipulating my fundamental emotions into believing there is something meaningful and tragic happening.

What if Shelter isn’t going the ‘tragic’ route?
What if it ends up being about something truly happy?
Did you know that you can actually experience feels from anything but a tragic moment?
How would you really describe the feels then?

One might say that it’s only a six minute short, but the fact that Shelter goes out of its way to show Rin’s letter from her father, to have me spend time reading it on a pause, tells me that there is a serious attempt to create a legitimate story. However, all of that means jack shit when the first five minutes did not build Rin from the ground up; she remains grounded forever. And with that, I can’t come to like Rin for anything other than her appearance — it’s cute.

What if she isn’t cute?
What would happen then?
This is another one of many abuses seen in anime – a little off topic here but would anyone actually enjoy Eromanga-sensei as much if the female cast aren’t lolis?

To summarize all of this, Porter Robinson’s Shelter music video literally had me watched a pretty teenage girl being all alone in a melancholic world; she’s pretty much dead to me, nothing more. I couldn’t sympathize with a cute girl who I had absolutely no relation with. But believe me on this – it’s not Rin’s fault that I can’t cry for her; it’s A-1 Pictures that could not employ decent storytelling for an actually decent story setting.

The song itself is still awesome as hell, though. I just wish Robinson would have gone to KyoAni instead; those guys really know how to make a great, original story.

 

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Charlotte

 

Full on spoilers for this one…

 

Following the success of Angel Beats!, somehow Jun Maeda thought it was a genius’s idea to kill off a character in order to elicit feels from his fans. He had everything in hand to make a great show but how… just how did he screw up so bad?

Now I remember that he’d said something about having done his very best for Little Busters! which was absolutely true. But to think that he’d keep on producing content while being burned out, I really do believe that he took the most dangerous route to please his fans and basically ended up in danger himself.

Do not even get me started on the confession scene — probably among the driest ones I have ever seen in my entire life, yo. Let me give you another one of those past experience I’ve gladly had:

This one acquaintance of mine (a few years older) — he was super smart he put honor students to shame. One day he’d realized that he was gay and it got to the level where he’d wanted to “take it up” a few more notches. In case you still haven’t clicked; I was saying that he wanted to go trans. His mom wasn’t disgusted by the fact that he was gay and actually made a deal — he could go trans if he would have got all A’s.

Well damn, never have I been reluctant to learn of one trans doctor’s life story.

So back to Charlotte. This is legit what I’d thought off right after witnessing Nao laying down the deal. Gawd damn she would make a great tsundere Asian mana who would do anything for you but never at a cost of nothing and not admitting to any of then in addition. The whole scene had me cringed and giggled at the same time; it was a hard feat to achieve so props to Maeda for that.

Poor Yuu though, having to fight the world just to pursue the one thing he loves with all his heart, just like this gay acquaintance of mine.

Also, thanks Maeda for not having written Nao off as a cheap whore who’d make a life promise and ran away; she actually kept her words, stayed by Yuu’s side even after his memories were gone. That part was truly cute but wasn’t anything of feels.

 

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I will probably write more in this topic if you are dying to know what I think about some other titles famous for making people bawling their eyes. Just holla at me in the comments, my lovelies!

Until then, this has been Shoka trying to voice his “feelings” towards some stuff that should on papers, make me feel my own crying voice. Maybe a continuation post should be the vice versa?!

• Anime
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